The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was a cautious tale about the dangers of pride and unbridled passion. A Daughter of Fair Verona says phooey on that, tweaks Shakespeare so that our teenage lovers prove too incompetent to actually do themselves in, and instead live to marry and beget a litter that Abraham and Sarah would nod approvingly at. Romeo and Juliet’s oldest is the fair Rosaline, who — yes, is named after the girl Romeo was lusting for when he showed up at the Capulet party that night. Rosie has been betrothed four times in the past, but each time has managed to escape uninspiring men by marrying them off to someone else. Now, her parents have arranged a wedding with her and the foul Duke whose previous three wives all mysteriously died after he’d spent their dowries. Why? Well, this is Renaissance Italy, where family politics are particularly vicious. Fortunately, at the betrothal ball, the Duke developed an acute case of knife-in-chest — but now everyone thinks Rosie did it, mostly because she had a knife up her sleeve in case the Duke got fresh. Although the Prince vouches for her innocence, Rosie must discover the true killer to restore her name and save herself from those who might seek to avenge him. It’s a quirky take on Shakespeare with appeal that I imagine varies a lot on the audience.

This title caught my eye almost immediately because I have a particular fondness for The Sims 2 and one of its neighborhoods, Veronaville, in which players can retell the drama of Romeo and Juliet for themselves — or not. I have a “Sims 2 in Sims 4” save and have recently been replaying it, and so Verona was on my mind when I spotted this being cataloged. It’s a hard book to classify: it’s historical fiction, I suppose, but with a very loose Renaissance setting, with no real politicians or events to anchor it. The plot is straightforward: headstrong female protagonist gets betrothed, gets a messy escape when the boorish fiance dies, and then has to solve the mystery for various reasons At the same time, Rosie has fallen in love for the first time, at the advanced age of twenty — and inexplicably, she’s fallen for a silly ass from a rival family named Lysander. She finds some support in her cause from the Prince, who takes her intellect seriously (and who harbors a crush on her that’s obvious to the reader but which Rosie remains oblivious to), as well as pushback from those who don’t think this is any kind of business for a respectable woman to be involving herself in. The ending offers quite the twist, at least as far as the culprit goes. As is appropriate for a book inspired by Shakespeare, there are a few double entendres and a lot of Bard quotes, not necessarily from Romeo and Juliet itself. However, the language is almost wholly contemporary, as is the general feel of the book. There’s a fair bit of humor in here, either from the wordplay or Rosie’s exasperation at her parents’ constant pawing at one another.

I enjoyed this for the most part, though I began losing interest in the last third except for wondering that direction Rosie’s love life would go: her attraction to the pretty fool Lysander was inexplicable to me when the Prince was there being all Byronic, but as Mickey and Sylvia observed: love is strange.